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Kojima: Metal Gear Solid 5 to have no "playable torture" scenes

Hideo Kojima has revealed the teased torture scenes for Metal Gear Solid 5 are limited to cut scenes and won't be handed over the player as gameplay. His comments come in the wake of GTA V.

If such violence gives "new emotions that are important" then Kojima-san will include them, but actually playing the role is a step too far for him so it's "non-playable."

Rockstar wasn't so shy and included a scene involving the player needing to torture information out of a person who may or may not have rubbed elbows with a terrorist.

Naturally the inclusion of this segment of the game stirred some controversy, although the character responsible for the torture does give something of a 'torture is only for the torturer' speech afterward, explaining they don't believe it's any good for extracting information. Water boarding is included alongside shock treatment, pliers and big wrench.

"It's something that needs to be done," said Kojima. "As the expressiveness of video games goes up, if you want to go beyond that it's not something you can avoid. Of course not all video games have to do this, and in my case it's not something that I want to go through. If the violence will give new emotions that are important to the game, I want to put it in there, especially with this game where one of the main topics is revenge. I don't want to walk around that."

"I didn't want to go as far as having playable torture," he added. "The part of Metal Gear Solid 5 that has torture is non-playable." Torture isn't a stranger to the Metal Gear franchise, with Ocelot in previous titles having tortured the player character. These were playable sections where we had to hold out.

"So far the player's been tortured by Ocelot so much that I'm thinking that I might be the one that introduced torture to games," joked Kojima-san. "So I'm sorry about that!"